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A screenshot of a modern GUI (KDE SC 4).

The Macintosh 128K was the first commercially successful personal computer to use a graphical user interface

[1]
A `





(), often pronounced , is a type of user interface that allows
users to interact with programs in more ways than typing such as computers; hand-held devices such
as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices; household appliances and office
equipment with images rather than text commands. A c
offers graphical icons, and visual
indicators, as opposed totext-based interfaces, typed command labels or text navigation to fully
represent the information and actions available to a user. The actions are usually performed
[2]
through direct manipulation of the graphical elements.

The term c
is historically restricted to the scope of two-dimensional display screens with display
resolutions capable of describing generic information, in the tradition of the computer
science research at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). The term c
earlier might have been
applicable to other high-resolution types of interfaces that are non-generic, such as videogames, or
[3]
not restricted to flat screens, like volumetric displays.

G 
 [hide]

u History

a u.u Precursors

a u.2 PARC user interface

a u.3 Evolution

2 Components

3 Post-WMP interfaces

^ User interface and interaction design

6 Comparison to other interfaces

a 6.u Command-line interfaces

M Three-dimensional user interfaces

a M.u Motivation

a M.2 Technologies

ë See also

8 References

w External links

[edit]History

An early-1990s style Unix desktop running the X Window System graphical user interface

Ô 
 
 

[edit]©
  
A precursor to GUIs was invented by researchers at the Stanford Research Institute, led by Douglas
Engelbart. They developed the use of text-basedhyperlinks manipulated with a mouse for the On-Line
System. The concept of hyperlinks was further refined and extended to graphics by researchers
at Xerox PARC, who went beyond text-based hyperlinks and used a GUI as the primary interface for
the Xerox Alto computer. Most modern general-purpose GUIs are derived from this system. As a
result, some people call this class of interface a PARC User Interface (PUI) (note that PUI is also an
acronym for perceptual user interface).

Ivan Sutherland developed a pointer-based system called the Sketchpad in 1963. It used a light-pen
to guide the creation and manipulation of objects in engineering drawings.

[edit]©





The PARC user interface consisted of graphical elements such aswindows, menus, radio
buttons, check boxes and icons. The PARC user interface employs a pointing device in addition to a
keyboard. These aspects can be emphasized by using the alternative acronymWIMP, which stands
for JJ
, 
,
and  .

[edit] 

The Xerox Star Workstation introduced the first GUI operating systems as shown above.

Following PARC the first GUI-centric computer operating model was the Xerox 8010 Star Information
[4]
System in 1981, followed by the Apple Lisa (which presented the concept of menu bar as well as
window controls) in 1983, the Apple Macintosh 128K in 1984, and the Atari ST and
Commodore Amiga in 1985.

The GUIs familiar to most people today are Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, and X Window
System interfaces. Apple, IBM and Microsoft used many of Xerox's ideas to develop products, and
IBM's Common User Access specifications formed the basis of the user interface found in Microsoft
Windows, IBM OS/2Presentation Manager, and the Unix Motif toolkit and window manager. These
ideas evolved to create the interface found in current versions of Microsoft Windows, as well as in
Mac OS X and various desktop environments for Unix-like operating systems, such as Linux. Thus
most current GUIs have largely common idioms.

[edit]Components

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A GUI uses a combination of technologies and devices to provide a platform the user can interact
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Modern CLI

GUIs were introduced in reaction to the steep learning curve of command-line

[9][10][10]
interfaces (CLI), which require commands to be typed on the keyboard. Since the commands
available in command line interfaces can be numerous, complicated operations can be completed
using a short sequence of words and symbols. This allows for greater efficiency and productivity once
many commands are learned,[9][10][10] but reaching this level takes some time because the command
G G
words are not easily discoverable and not mnemonic.WIMPs ( window, icon, menu, pointing device ),
on the other hand, present the user with numerous widgets that represent and can trigger some of the
system's available commands.

WIMPs extensively use modes as the meaning of all keys and clicks on specific positions on the
screen are redefined all the time. Command line interfaces use modes only in limitedforms, such as
the current directory and environment variables.

Most modern operating systems provide both a GUI and some level of a CLI, although the GUIs
usually receive more attention. The GUI is usually WIMP-based, although occasionally other
metaphors surface, such as those used in Microsoft Bob, 3dwm or File System Visualizer (FSV).

Applications may also provide both interfaces, and when they do the GUI is usually a WIMP wrapper
around the command-line version. This is especially common with applicationsdesigned for Unix-
like operating systems. The latter used to be implemented first because it allowed the developers to
focus exclusively on their product's functionality without botheringabout interface details such as
designing icons and placing buttons. Designing programs this way also allows users to run the
program non-interactively, such as in a shell script.

[edit]Three-dimensional user interfaces

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